NAAC Report 2

NAAC REPORT Career Guidance Part 1

Presentation Skills

18 Tips to Improve your Presentation Skills

Astounding fact has been revealed by studies regarding fear among people for public speaking. Being an orator or mediator you must possess that confidence which could make you stand firmly in front of audience. You must have come across some people who call practice of giving presentations as a foremost tool to deliver best presentation but along with that presentation skills must be there in you.

The best start can simply result an amazing presentation. Here are some key tips to sharpen your presentation skills by which you will not only become confident but you will become competent also. You can use these presentation tips even if you are not doing a presentation using PowerPoint, since the following presentation tips are also useful for public speaking without a projector.

1. Eye contact

Throughout your presentation you must have an eye contact with every person so that you could deliver your message persuasively to every one.

2. Be Entertaining

To grab audience attention, your speech should be informative and interesting, so instead of reciting dry facts try to add humor in your presentation. But, try not to be funny at serious matters.

3. 10-20-30 Rule for slideshow

It means your presentation should not exceed 10 slides and duration more than 20 minutes also not less than 30 point font. These collectively make your presentation precise and effective.

4. Slow down

Generally, due to nervousness people try to complete their speech in rush. So, it is advisable to consciously control your speed and give appropriate pauses.

5. 15 words summary

Filter 15 key words of your presentation and repeat these to communicate your message well.

6. 20-20 Rule for slide show

Another rule for slideshow, according to which you can have 20 slides for the duration of 20 seconds, this will keep your presentation precise. You can learn more about 20-20 rule in our past article.

7. Don’t read

Avoid reading slides while giving presentation as it can distract audience attention from your speech.

8. Project your voice

You must be clearly audible to every one, for this you need to project your voice. Yes, pitch of your voice should possess required variations and pauses.

9. Speeches are about stories

If your presentation is going to exceed try cover up points by correlating it with stories. Moreover, speaker should have this art of creating stories instantly.

10. Don’t plan gestures

It is advisable not to make gestures because sometimes it looks odd and perhaps matches your message.

11. Appreciate queries

Instead of creating sounds like umm… ah… and all that while handling query, try to appreciate all query by using phrases like ‘very good question’ , ‘thank you for query’ all these can give you a moment to gather the answer for the asked question and viewers will never come to know about your trick!!

12. Inhale and Exhale

Avoid creating unwanted sounds or repetition of word ‘you know’ instead of this you can take long breathe. Undoubtedly, looks awkward but will be hardly noticed by anyone.

13.  Reach venue before time

Setting projector and other preparations are not accepted when people are waiting for you to speak. So, it important to reach venue before time and make required alterations and this can curb your anxiety to a great extent.

14.  Practice Practice Practice

Practicing in front of mirror or audience can make you a strong competent and will also boost up your confidence.

15. Don’t apologize unnecessarily

It is not advisable to apologize for the things like, for getting nervous while delivering speech, for lacking in preparation or for getting anxious, it looks awkward.

16.  Apologize where required

Only Apologize if you have reached late or you have made any considerable mistake, otherwise it is not required for being humble.

17. Have fun

Practice to inject passion and enthusiasm in your presentation to make it interesting and lively

18. Consider yourself as audience

While making presentation, think according to the audience point of view. Use ‘what Is In IT for Me’ approach to collect the material.

So, these tips can help you in a great way to make your presentation a success.

Spoken English

Spoken English:

v Read the dictionary and remember five to ten words a day.

v When you read a word, find some example to use that word in many ways.

v Ask your friends and family, if you really don't know the meaning of the word or the usage.

v Feel free to talk in English even though you are learning.

v Think before you speak and your message will be clearer (practically proven).

v Do not feel shy or nervous to learn from others.

v Apply the simple English words in your routine. That will help you to a great extent.

v Never lose the interest to learn new words. Always keep up the practise.

v Read for a minimum of half an hour every day. Reading is very important to all of us. It builds our knowledge, it gives us an escape, and it exercises our brains. The more you read, the better your reading skills and pronunciation will improve. Read on topics you're interested in, be it a romance novel, a sports magazine, or a car engine manual.

v Write a literary piece. Try your hand at writing a novel, a short story, a poem, a play, or any other kind of creative writing. If you work at it bit by bit each day, it will hone your writing skills as well as exercise your creativity.

v Listen to the instructor and listen well. While you're listening, write down good notes and important details he/she says. Block distracting things from your mind. Listen to other people speaking the same language to improve your speaking and writing and pronunciation.

v Speak in front of a class. Be sure to talk loud enough so people can hear and speak with little words and big words mixed together. Communicate a lot.

FRESHER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS – HR RELATED:

 Can you tell me about your career plans?

1.     What kind of job opportunities are you looking for?

2.     What are your immediate goals?

3.     What are your strengths / Weakness?

4.     Why did you choose  BCOM/BA/ BBM/BSC ?

5.     Where do you see yourself in the next 2 Years in northern Trust

6.     What motivates you ?

7.     Do you plan to do higher studies? If yes, Why are you applying for this job ? What   assurance can you give me that you will work with Northern Trust for atleast 2 years.

8.     Do you prefer a job with high salary or do you prefer to focus on your career. 

9.     How flexible are you to work in shifts & Are you willing to Relocate to Bangalore ?

10.   How prepared are you to handle pressure/Stress?

11.    How much time do you think you may need to adopt yourself to a new environment

12.   Please talk something about your favorite subject or any topic of your choice.

13.   What are your areas of improvement?

14.  What do you know about Northern Trust ?

15.   Tell me more about yourself. I would NOT  like to know about your family background-father/mother/siblings/place where you come from , but would want to know more about you as a person.

16. Tell me more about the project you have done ?

                                      

Power Point Presentation Tips

Email etiquette

Why do you need email etiquette?

A company needs to implement etiquette rules for the following three reasons:

• Professionalism: by using proper email language your company will convey a professional image.
• Efficiency: emails that get to the point are much more effective than poorly worded emails.            
• Protection from liability: employee awareness of email risks will protect your company from costly law suits.

What are the etiquette rules? 

There are many etiquette guides and many different etiquette rules. Some rules will differ  according to the nature of your business and the corporate culture. Below we list what we consider as the 31 most important email etiquette rules that apply to nearly all companies.

32 Most important email etiquette tips:

1. Be concise and to the point

2. Answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions

3. Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation

4. Make it personal

5. Use templates for frequently used responses

6. Answer swiftly

7. Do not attach unnecessary files

8. Use proper structure & layout

9. Do not overuse the high priority option

10. Do not write in CAPITALS

11. Don't leave out the message thread

12. Add disclaimers to your emails

13. Read the email before you send it

14. Do not overuse Reply to All

15. Mailings > use the bcc: field or do a mail merge

16. Take care with abbreviations and emoticons

17. Be careful with formatting

18. Take care with rich text and HTML messages

19. Do not forward chain letters

20. Do not request delivery and read receipts

21. Do not ask to recall a message.

22. Do not copy a message or attachment without permission

23. Do not use email to discuss confidential information

24. Use a meaningful subject

25. Use active instead of passive

26. Avoid using URGENT and IMPORTANT

27. Avoid long sentences

28. Don't send or forward emails containing libelous, defamatory, offensive, racist or obscene   remarks

29. Don't forward virus hoaxes and chain letters

30. Keep your language gender neutral

31. Don't reply to spam

32. Use cc: field sparingly

1. Be concise and to the point. Do not make an e-mail longer than it needs to be. Remember that reading an e-mail is harder than reading printed communications and a long e-mail can be very discouraging to read.

2. Answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions. An email reply must answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions – If you do not answer all the questions in the original email, you will receive further e-mails regarding the unanswered questions, which will not only waste your time and your customer’s time but also cause considerable frustration. Moreover, if you are able to pre-empt relevant questions, your customer will be grateful and impressed with your efficient and thoughtful customer service. Imagine for instance that a customer sends you an email asking which credit cards you accept. Instead of just listing the credit card types, you can guess that their next question will be about how they can order, so you also include some order information and a URL to your order page. Customers will definitely appreciate this.

3. Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation. This is not only important because improper spelling, grammar and punctuation give a bad impression of your company, it is also important for conveying the message properly. Emails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and can sometimes even change the meaning of the text. And, if your program has a spell checking option, why not use it?

4. Make it personal. Not only should the e-mail be personally addressed, it should also include personal i.e. customized content. For this reason auto replies are usually not very effective. However, templates can be used effectively in this way, see next tip.

5. Use templates for frequently used responses. Some questions you get over and over again, such as directions to your office or how to subscribe to your newsletter. Save these texts as response templates and paste these into your message when you need them. You can save your templates in a Word document, or use pre-formatted emails. Even better is a tool such as ReplyMate for Outlook (allows you to use 10 templates for free).

6. Answer swiftly. Customers send an e-mail because they wish to receive a quick response. If they did not want a quick response they would send a letter or a fax. Therefore, each e-mail should be replied to within at least 24 hours, and preferably within the same working day. If the email is complicated, just send an email back saying that you have received it and that you will get back to them. This will put the customer's mind at rest and usually customers will then be very patient!

7. Do not attach unnecessary files. By sending large attachments you can annoy customers and even bring down their e-mail system. Wherever possible try to compress attachments and only send attachments when they are productive. Moreover, you need to have a good virus scanner in place since your customers will not be very happy if you send them documents full of viruses!

8. Use proper structure & layout. Since reading from a screen is more difficult than reading from paper, the structure and lay out is very important for e-mail messages. Use short paragraphs and blank lines between each paragraph. When making points, number them or mark each point as separate to keep the overview.

9. Do not overuse the high priority option. We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you overuse the high priority option, it will lose its function when you really need it. Moreover, even if a mail has high priority, your message will come across as slightly aggressive if you flag it as 'high priority'.

10. Do not write in CAPITALS. IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING. This can be highly annoying and might trigger an unwanted response in the form of a flame mail. Therefore, try not to send any email text in capitals.

11. Don't leave out the message thread. When you reply to an email, you must include the original mail in your reply, in other words click 'Reply', instead of 'New Mail'. Some people say that you must remove the previous message since this has already been sent and is therefore unnecessary. However, I could not agree less. If you receive many emails you obviously cannot remember each individual email. This means that a 'thread less email' will not provide enough information and you will have to spend a frustratingly long time to find out the context of the email in order to deal with it. Leaving the thread might take a fraction longer in download time, but it will save the recipient much more time and frustration in looking for the related emails in their inbox!

12. Add disclaimers to your emails. It is important to add disclaimers to your internal and external mails, since this can help protect your company from liability. Consider the following scenario: an employee accidentally forwards a virus to a customer by email. The customer decides to sue your company for damages. If you add a disclaimer at the bottom of every external mail, saying that the recipient must check each email for viruses and that it cannot be held liable for any transmitted viruses, this will surely be of help to you in court (read more about email disclaimers). Another example: an employee sues the company for allowing a racist email to circulate the office. If your company has an email policy in place and adds an email disclaimer to every mail that states that employees are expressly required not to make defamatory statements, you have a good case of proving that the company did everything it could to prevent offensive emails.

13. Read the email before you send it. A lot of people don't bother to read an email before they send it out, as can be seen from the many spelling and grammar mistakes contained in emails. Apart from this, reading your email through the eyes of the recipient will help you send a more effective message and avoid misunderstandings and inappropriate comments.

14. Do not overuse Reply to All. Only use Reply to All if you really need your message to be seen by each person who received the original message.

15. Mailings > use the Bcc: field or do a mail merge. When sending an email mailing, some people place all the email addresses in the To: field. There are two drawbacks to this practice: (1) the recipient knows that you have sent the same message to a large number of recipients, and (2) you are publicizing someone else's email address without their permission. One way to get round this is to place all addresses in the Bcc: field. However, the recipient will only see the address from the To: field in their email, so if this was empty, the To: field will be blank and this might look like spamming. You could include the mailing list email address in the To: field, or even better, if you have Microsoft Outlook and Word you can do a mail merge and create one message for each recipient. A mail merge also allows you to use fields in the message so that you can for instance address each recipient personally. For more information on how to do a Word mail merge, consult the Help in Word.

16. Take care with abbreviations and emoticons. In business emails, try not to use abbreviations such as BTW (by the way) and LOL (laugh out loud). The recipient might not be aware of the meanings of the abbreviations and in business emails these are generally not appropriate. The same goes for emoticons, such as the smiley :-). If you are not sure whether your recipient knows what it means, it is better not to use it.

17. Be careful with formatting. Remember that when you use formatting in your emails, the sender might not be able to view formatting, or might see different fonts than you had intended. When using colors, use a color that is easy to read on the background. 1

8. Take care with rich text and HTML messages. Be aware that when you send an email in rich text or HTML format, the sender might only be able to receive plain text emails. If this is the case, the recipient will receive your message as a .txt attachment. Most email clients however, including Microsoft Outlook, are able to receive HTML and rich text messages.

19. Do not forward chain letters. Do not forward chain letters. We can safely say that all of them are hoaxes. Just delete the letters as soon as you receive them.

20. Do not request delivery and read receipts. This will almost always annoy your recipient before he or she has even read your message. Besides, it usually does not work anyway since the recipient could have blocked that function, or his/her software might not support it, so what is the use of using it? If you want to know whether an email was received it is better to ask the recipient to let you know if it was received.

21. Do not ask to recall a message. Biggest chances are that your message has already been delivered and read. A recall request would look very silly in that case wouldn't it? It is better just to send an email to say that you have made a mistake. This will look much more honest than trying to recall a message.

22. Do not copy a message or attachment without permission. Do not copy a message or attachment belonging to another user without permission of the originator. If you do not ask permission first, you might be infringing on copyright laws.

23. Do not use email to discuss confidential information. Sending an email is like sending a postcard. If you don't want your email to be displayed on a bulletin board, don't send it. Moreover, never make any libelous, sexist or racially discriminating comments in emails, even if they are meant to be a joke.

24. Use a meaningful subject. Try to use a subject that is meaningful to the recipient as well as yourself. For instance, when you send an email to a company requesting information about a product, it is better to mention the actual name of the product, e.g. 'Product A information' than to just say 'product information' or the company's name in the subject.

25. Use active instead of passive. Try to use the active voice of a verb wherever possible. For instance, 'We will process your order today', sounds better than 'Your order will be processed today'. The first sounds more personal, whereas the latter, especially when used frequently, sounds unnecessarily formal. 2

6. Avoid using URGENT and IMPORTANT. Even more so than the high-priority option, you must at all times try to avoid these types of words in an email or subject line. Only use this if it is a really, really urgent or important message.

27. Avoid long sentences. Try to keep your sentences to a maximum of 15-20 words. Email is meant to be a quick medium and requires a different kind of writing than letters. Also take care not to send emails that are too long. If a person receives an email that looks like a dissertation, chances are that they will not even attempt to read it!

28. Don't send or forward emails containing libelous, defamatory, offensive, racist or obscene remarks. By sending or even just forwarding one libelous, or offensive remark in an email, you and your company can face court cases resulting in multi-million dollar penalties.

29. Don't forward virus hoaxes and chain letters. If you receive an email message warning you of a new unstoppable virus that will immediately delete everything from your computer, this is most probably a hoax. By forwarding hoaxes you use valuable bandwidth and sometimes virus hoaxes contain viruses themselves, by attaching a so-called file that will stop the dangerous virus. The same goes for chain letters that promise incredible riches or ask your help for a charitable cause. Even if the content seems to be bona fide, the senders are usually not. Since it is impossible to find out whether a chain letter is real or not, the best place for it is the recycle bin.

30. Keep your language gender neutral. In this day and age, avoid using sexist language such as: 'The user should add a signature by configuring his email program'. Apart from using he/she, you can also use the neutral gender: ''The user should add a signature by configuring the email program'.

31. Don't reply to spam. By replying to spam or by unsubscribing, you are confirming that your email address is 'live'. Confirming this will only generate even more spam. Therefore, just hit the delete button or use email software to remove spam automatically.

32. Use cc: field sparingly. Try not to use the cc: field unless the recipient in the cc: field knows why they are receiving a copy of the message. Using the cc: field can be confusing since the recipients might not know who is supposed to act on the message. Also, when responding to a cc: message, should you include the other recipient in the cc: field as well? This will depend on the situation. In general, do not include the person in the cc: field unless you have a particular reason for wanting this person to see your response. Again, make sure that this person will know why they are receiving a copy